The rivet of the instant invention is an improvement on the composite rivet disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,478,544 issued Oct. 23, 1984, for Composite Rivet, and assigned to the assignee hereof.
Carbon fiber reinforced materials are widely used in the aircraft industry for airframe structural components. However, one characteristic of composite materials utilizing carbon fibers is that the carbon fibers are difficult to reform. Thus, the use of carbon fiber reinforced resins in rivets has heretofore been limited by the difficulty of efficiently forming the rivet heads.